


By Scamander Side

by spinnd



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Initiating the Merlin/Arthur tag for Kingsman, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Not A Fix-It, Power Dynamics, Pre-Canon, Sexual Tension, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-07
Updated: 2015-06-07
Packaged: 2018-04-03 07:19:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4092073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spinnd/pseuds/spinnd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"I'm not Harry," Arthur tells him, even as fingers tug at the buttons on his well-worn shirt. </i> </p>
<p>
  <i>"I know," he says, and deftly undoes his tie. </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	By Scamander Side

**Author's Note:**

  * For [potted_music](https://archiveofourown.org/users/potted_music/gifts).



> Don't mind me, this is just an odd idea that's been playing around for a bit, and that I've decided to put pen to paper for. 
> 
> Hopefully, the tags are adequate, and relevant, warnings.
> 
> -
> 
> In which there are poor attempts at coping and consent explorations, Arthur's a prick but not always, and Merlin's his own worst enemy.

 

_We lost the signal,_ goes the oft-proclaimed refrain. _We don't know where he is._

 

He stumbles from the infirmary, fresh from the loss of Bedivere, and straight into another loss: Galahad deemed missing in Kandahar, convoy and comms silent, and possibly - possibly, probably, most fucking likely - dead.

 

Mordred takes one look at him, and steers him out of Control.

 

"We might find him yet." Mordred tells him and he nods dumbly at Harry's handler; one of the two who knows about them. In the intervening week, it is Arthur who repeats it; the only second other who had known.

 

Arthur, who clasps his shoulder each time they pass in the corridor, touch lingering, longer, gradually. So unlike Mordred's sympathetic distance as the handler throws himself into scanning the trackers and video feeds for signs of life (a coping strategy, surely). Arthur had always been tactile, but of late, this could be almost called affectionate.

 

"Don't give up hope." He says each time, accompanying each touch with such words.

 

The hand could've been Harry's, if the palm had been warmer, fingers lighter. But he nods at each passing brush, and Arthur smiles in the glow of the sconce.

 

It is a logic leap he cannot begin to try to unpick, how it goes from that to here after a run of sleepless days, how he finds himself in Arthur's Camelot suite, standing just across the threshold. He runs a short coding algorithm through his head; the simplicity of it calms him enough to take another step in.

 

Arthur emerges from the bathroom. At his nod, he takes yet another step through, and leaves the other man to close the distance.

 

"I'm not Harry," Arthur tells him, even as fingers tug at the buttons on his well-worn shirt.

 

"I know," he says, and deftly undoes his tie. They are maneuvering across the room now, gliding, shoes scuffing softly on smooth wood. Their destination seems a garish four-poster bed; all looming dark wood and expensive red silk.

 

"This won't bring him back," Chester King says again, placing large hands on his hips, thumbing at the belt loops.

 

"I know," he repeats. He draws out the length of leather, and the loops now hang empty.

 

"As long as we're clear," the older man tells him, then leans forward and presses their foreheads together. "As long as you remember."

 

He tilts his head to catch unfamiliar lips with his own.

 

"I don't want to remember," he murmurs into the warmth of that mouth, and it knocks him back, knees folding under at the edge of the bed and sending him sprawling on the covers. There are hands on his shoulders now, hands that had shoved him off his feet now pinning him down, and his legs automatically part to make room for the man half-kneeling between them.

 

"Let me." Arthur says, and strips him the rest of the way down, and smiles. "Legs up."

 

Harry is - had been, gentler. Chester King less so, but he had expected that. (Hadn't been prepared for this, though. Not quite.)

 

"Arthur." He groans. Even with the lube, the fingers are digging into him, scraping a sensitive line along his inner walls that make him clench down hard and squirm. The other hand on his hip tightens its bruising grip, and holds him fast. "Arthur, st- ah!"

 

The fingers move relentlessly; scissoring, probing. "Pardon?"

 

He swallows and clenches his jaw against any further protest. Closes his eyes against the sight of his King between his knees, but it still doesn't do anything to shut out the white and gold flares that spark at every bump along his prostate. One hard thrust has him leaking across his belly, arching off the bed in a full-bodied shudder.

 

The fingers withdraw, and it is both a loss and a mercy. He gulps air; hears the rip of foil, barely, above the humming in his ears. Arthur settles atop him, the rasp of a new cotton shirt prickling uncomfortably, matching the drag of wool against his inner thighs. 

 

"Legs up," Arthur reminds, cock sliding down the cleft to nudge at his entrance, and he obeys.

 

-

 

Twenty-four hours later, Harry Hart is on a Gulfstream medivac carrier headed home, and spends the next week at Barts recuperating in a quiet secluded ward. He spends those seven evenings in the hard back of the plastic chair beside him.

 

-

 

"It was -" _A mistake_ , he wants to finish, but doesn't. Not out of fear, although Arthur's temper is legendary. The words spill from the same something he had felt that first evening in Arthur's room, inexplicable and nebulous; a weight he could not grasp, shifting and slippery in his chest.

 

Legend or otherwise, there is no flare of anger, nor cold disappointment, in those sharp grey eyes at his words.

 

"Was it?" Arthur poses, then sits back to watch him damn himself with any and every answer he could possibly give.

 

"Sir," he settles for, instead, and bows stiffly before exiting the room.

 

"Merlin." He hears, and the door swings shut behind him before he hears any more.

 

-

 

So it goes on. Each time. Every time. How many near misses can one man survive, he thinks, only to stop himself short. Best not to think of things as these, when there are soft sheets beneath him, and a heavy weight above, and in, him.

 

Afghanistan, it started off there. Then, it is Tangier, and Basra, and Sarajevo; him in the King's bed each time Harry almost does not return from his deadly globetrottings, and each time he thinks:  _this is the last_. 

 

Harry doesn't know, until he does.

 

There's nothing dramatic about the revelation; just a slow waking from the haze of anaesthesia to the sight of the King and his wizard standing side by side next to his bed rail.

 

He flinches the moment Harry's eyes meet his, so he only has himself to blame for giving himself away. Even then, the explanations, that had been fluent and persuasive in mirrored rehearsals, die quietly on his tongue.

 

"Does he know you use as him as your comfort fuck?" Harry asks, when Arthur leaves not five minutes later.

 

"What makes you think I'm not his?" The rapier tip is out to draw blood, because sometimes, the best defense is an offensive feint, and he's grown tired of standing still, merely taking the blows. He folds himself into the chair by the bedrail, keeps his back straight, chin high.

 

Harry makes no move to sit up, broken tibia fixated and cast, shoulder firmly wrapped where shell shrapnel had caught him on his left side and been left to fester for almost a month in Serbian captivity.

 

"Kandahar?" Harry queries, and it is a wild, good, guess. "I should have suspected something then, with the way Oliver kept looking at us after that."

 

For someone long in the spy business, Mordred had always had a lousy poker face.

 

"I won't -" the words catch, but he pushes them through, "- I won't stop you from leaving."

 

 Harry's fingers brush along his. The touch is almost searing, but neither of them pull away.

 

"How optimistic of you," Harry says.

 

-

 

Come 1997, there is Lebanon, and James, and Lee.

 

Correction. There _was_  Lee.

 

He is waiting at the front door when Harry's car pulls up outside his Mews home. His Knight ushers him in with an unlocking of the latch and a tired wave. 

 

Harry's face is drawn, haunted, exactly like how he'd been on Lancelot's video feed, the night their old friend took a bullet to the head as Harry'd been helpless to do anything but watch (and he could do naught but pray). 

 

Harry crowds into his space, almost touching but not quite.

 

"Don't you normally run to Arthur in times of great personal crisis?" 

 

He has neither the strength, nor the anger, to rise to Harry's words; not when they're both hurting tonight. So he merely presses lips to familiar lips, breathing in familiar musk, leaning into familiar warmth.

 

"Arthur does not get _this._ " He tells Harry. His agent (lover, Knight) hums an affirmative into the space behind his ear.

 

"If only he didn't get everything else," Harry laughs humourlessly, before he gently turns him, shucking off both their trousers, and fucks him hard into the wall.

 

-

 

Young Unwin makes Harry feel alive like never before. He watches, almost envious, but if there is anything between his Knight and his new protege, Harry does a much better job at keeping it hidden. If it's any comfort, the lad seems to have taken a shine to them both - but Harry was there first, for him, and will always be.

 

They catch up to Professor Arnold, whose head explodes on the video feed, and Harry's resulting grenade sends him into a cranial contusion and a coma. It's all rather overwhelming for Eggsy, and he takes pity on the young man and puts him out on his route march two days early to get him off the grounds, away from the mounting chaos, away from Harry.

 

"He's worried about you," he tells Harry, who remains silent on the medical bed.

 

"You're worried about him too," a voice from behind observes. He lets Arthur step up beside him, hand over his where it rests on the bedrail, and his fingers slot into the spaces between his skin.

 

"As I'm sure you are, yourself." He mentions, then belatedly adds, "sir."

 

"I see you still reserve calling me Arthur only for when we're in bed together."

 

"Professional standards and a gentleman's code," he says, breaking a smile at Arthur's chuckle. Then, a hand travels up his arm, and he wills himself not to flinch, the effort cutting a tense line down his spine.

 

"Merlin -"

 

He shakes his head. "I'm sorry, Sir."

 

There is a brief, terrifying moment when the world tilts around him, hearing those words issuing from his own lips, but when he blinks again, the room is righted and the hand on his shoulder is gentle.

 

"He'll wake." Arthur says. The hand drops from his shoulder, and Arthur stays by him until the hour is up.

 

Harry stays asleep for two months, and only once does he pause in the hallway outside the room with the four-poster bed.

 

-

 

"Is Eggsy -" he starts, but Harry cuts him off with a raised hand and a sharp thin sound.

 

"I'll sort it out when I get back," his friend says. "I promised him as much."

 

He's a good lad, he wants to say, and a waste of good talent if they just let him walk. Kingsman might still make concession for his recruitment in other posts. 

 

But he takes one look at Harry, flitting through the armoury with a cold determination, and knows that anything else will not be enough; not for Eggsy, nor Harry.

 

"Your plane leaves in a hour." He hands over a manila package. Harry takes it, not letting their fingers touch. "Be careful. We don't know what Valentine might be planning."

 

"I'm always careful."

 

Harry's smile bares teeth. He stops himself from reaching for Harry as he walks by. 

 

"I know," he tells the empty room around him.

 

-

 

_Galahad, can you hear me?_

 

_Harry.. what the heck is going on?_

 

_Harry?_

 

There is blue sky and cloudsmear before him, and a bitter taste behind his tongue. He swivels away as the view turns black, removes his glasses at the first hot prickle behind his lids; tries to remember how to breathe - it takes longer than it should.

 

The weight in his chest is all too familiar, dull like the ache of an old wound, and no less painful. They had been living on borrowed time since Kandahar, he supposes faintly. If anything, he should be grateful. 

 

He replaces his glasses, and works his tongue around a dry throat.

 

"Arthur? Are you there?"

 

Half a breath breathed into his ear, and, "I am."

 

_And hadn't he always been?_

 

-

 

He gives himself half an hour - time enough to call through to their American friends for a favour, trading unneeded intel and a half-promise of consultation exchange for Harry's location and retrieval. Then, he shuts his computer, turns the lights off in his office, and makes his way to the suite.

 

Arthur is there, waiting.

 

"I'm sorry, sir." He says, hastily, forcing himself to meet that cool grey gaze. 

 

"Arthur." Arthur corrects, and looks almost amused. "You call me Arthur, here." 

 

He makes his way over to the bed, stripping his sweater and tie as Arthur watches from where he reclines against the pillows. 

 

"We have to do something," he says as he struggles with his shirt. "Valentine, and those SIMs."

 

Arthur is up and rounding the bed then, and his shirt is pulled off his back this time, ripping cloth where they catch on still-done-up buttons. 

 

"We will," Arthur reassures him as he is pushed face first into the bed. "Valentine is responsible for this, and he will be paid back justly."

 

Cold air on his back and arse is followed by an even colder dribble of lube, and he is wound tight tonight on exhaustion and grief. It takes more than what Arthur is willing to give to relax him, and while the initial intrusion runs uncomfortably close to compulsion, Arthur seems unfazed by the sounds it wrenches from his throat. His preparation is as clinical and thorough as it had always been, and his hole is loose and leaking despite the vice slowly winding itself around his guts. 

  
He pushes his teeth into his forearms, and the different pain anchors him to this bed - to Arthur, and him, within these four walls. 

 

"You don't want to remember," Arthur parrots back at him once he's finished prepping him, sliding wet fingers from his body and wiping them off on his trembling thigh. "Remember?"

 

He does, and nods and spreads his legs, planting his feet firmly on the floor. A hand steadies him and a cock pushes up into him, hard, fast, and it takes away his breath and the cramp in his belly all at once. Hips snap into his, blurring the red sheets before his eyes, and the weight and speed of the thrusts flay him open.

 

"I'm not Harry." Arthur presses his face into the space behind his ear, trailing lips down the right side of his neck as he comes, stuttering hot warm spurts within him.

 

He knows. As Arthur pulls from him, he realises that he hadn't gotten hard the entire time.

 

"Harry's dead." He hears the words in his head and on his tongue. When he closes his eyes, all he sees is blue sky.

 

-

 

_It's_ _okay,_ he tells Lancelot as they read the text that Eggsy hands them. Only, it's not okay, if he were to be entirely truthful. Not fucking okay at all.

 

"We'll have to deal with this ourselves." He shuts the phone and turns to his former trainees. "Follow me."

 

Later, when Eggsy hands him the implant, he only feels a numb acceptance as he takes it from the boy. 

 

"Arthur's?"

 

"Yeah." Eggsy eyes him, but it is only out of childish curiosity. "So he was in on this the whole time, then?"

 

He stares at the three screens running simultaneously. "Who knows, Eggsy. But that's no longer our concern. We have to move. Let's get you in with this invitation."

 

"What, like this?" Eggsy points at his getup, smirking uncertainly. The lad's face at the sight of the bespoke suit Harry had made for him is no less amusing. He feels a touch of affection as he shows him to the change room.

 

"Get dressed."

 

-

 

_Harry would be proud of you_.

 

He really would, he thinks, as he shuts the console on Eggsy's royal tryst and completes the signal transmission for Roxy's delayed pickup. 

 

"Should've seen him, Harry," he says. "I swear, he's just like you."

 

The words lift something from him, his chest oddly light as he regards the polished wood panelling before him. He glances over at the glass table where the implant lies connected to its mount and various wirings, and there is almost no hesitation as he stands to remove it and dumps it down the plane's garbage chute.

 

He opens the cabinet, and reaches for the whisky and two shot glasses. Pours out the amber liquid, and leaves them untouched before him as he settles into the back of the soft leather chair, hand trailing over the soft skin behind his ear.

 

He does not close his eyes.


End file.
